Yoga to face glow

Monasteries as warrior brokers

We recall that the Mughal Empire was kept in power by a huge army of professional soldiers. We also know that rural India constantly produced a surplus population, as we witnessed above with the young wandering Rajputs. Under the Mughals the economical repression escalated increasing the surplus population. The Mughal Empire through its demand for soldiers created a solution for the very same surplus rural populations it had caused. The demand and the economic repression were so strong that many even peaceful religious communities moved into militancy as a profession. The Sikhs who were founded about 1500 AD on ideas of universal toleration and peace turned into a fraternity of mercenaries. Even god-loving Bhakti communities joined in.

The traveller Tavernier confirms this situation about 1650:

You may see in India whole provinces like deserts, from which the peasant have fleed on account of the oppression of the Governors. Under cover of the fact that they [the Governors] are themselves Muhammadans, they persecute these poor [Hindu] idolaters to the uttermost, and if any of the latter become Muhammadans it is in order not to work any more; they become soldiers of Fakirs, who are people who make profession of having renounced the world, and live upon alms; but in